Many types of garments, i.e., clothing, are commonly stored on clothing hangers. Although there are numerous types of clothing hangers and clothing rods, which together allow users to store garments in home closets or on racks in a retail environment, little attention has been paid to effective solutions to keep garments separated from each other. In particular, little effort has been spent developing a way to easily maintain consistent spacing between garments. Such uniformity is not only aesthetically pleasing, it also allows garments to be easily organized and identified. Further, properly spaced garments are less likely to wrinkle, harbor odors from inadequate ventilation, or become damaged by an adjacent garment's buttons, zippers, or other protrusions.
A number of known devices which attempt to provide spacing between garments are, for various reasons, inadequate, inefficient, or cumbersome. For example, some known garment separators are difficult to attach and detach from a clothing rod. These devices feature members that lock together, but require special tools or great force to remove. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,971,210 describes clothing spacers that require “snap enclosures” to secure two “hemi-shells” closed. Once closed, the snap enclosures are hidden inside the hemi-shells and access to them is restricted. Other existing garment separators are not adaptable to different sizes, i.e., outer diameters, and shapes, e.g., square, round, ovular, etc., of clothing rods. Yet other garment separators slide easily on the clothing rod, but are thus too easily displaced from their desired position, allowing garments to bunch together. Other known devices which provide spacing between garments utilize a sleeve that slips over the top of a clothing rod to provide indentations for multiple hangers. Examples of this kind of closet organizer can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,971,210, 2,895,618, 2,868,389, 4,760,929, and 4,577,766, and U.S. Patent Pub. 2006/0278594. One of the problems with utilizing a sleeve is that the sleeve is semi-permanent and in order to move or remove the sleeve or create areas along the bar that are free from the organizer, a user must first remove multiple garments that are hanging from the sleeve, which is a burdensome and time-consuming task. With some sleeve devices, the entire closet bar must be removed from the closet in order to extract the sleeve organizer.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,745,942 describes a garment separator for use in retail environments. The separator is designed to hold a sign that indicates the size of the garments adjacent the sign. The separator shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,745,942 is a clamp that closes to a fixed minimum clothing bar size. It cannot be attached to, for example, the small diameter wire racks used in many newer houses and apartments. In addition, the sign attached to the clamping end makes it difficult to operate the clamp. The protruding sign further creates and aesthetically unpleasant clamp unacceptable for home use.
Therefore, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.